This Week in 330 AD: Constantinople Dedicated

 

May 11, 330 AD … nearly 1700 Years Ago

A “second Rome” essentially — a replacement for it, in reality. 

Keep this date in mind next time you call something “old”.

Constantinople is named after Constantine I who should be more widely recognized as the first Emperor to convert to Christianity and use his power to spread the relatively new religion throughout the Roman Empire. 

And hoo boy is that history complicated — feel free to read about it in detail above — but here is a summary from that page:

Constantine reigned during the 4th century CE and is known for attempting to Christianize the Roman Empire. He made the persecution of Christians illegal by signing the Edict of Milan in 313 and helped spread the religion by bankrolling church-building projects, commissioning new copies of the Bible, and summoning councils of theologians to hammer out the religion’s doctrinal kinks.

The Edict of Milan mandated religious tolerance via legal rights — seems that this too should be more well-known than it is:

... granted all persons freedom to worship whatever deity they pleased, assured Christians of legal rights (including the right to organize churches), and directed the prompt return to Christians of confiscated property.

“Granted all persons freedom to worship watever deity they pleased”. This is full-on frredom of religion, 1446 years prior to 1776, when it seemed like a revolutionary idea mainly because for several hundred years the entire world had been unable to avoid killing each other over religion, not because nobody ever thought of it before. 

It goes on to say this ponderous bit: “Previous edicts of toleration had been as short-lived as the regimes that sanctioned them, but this time the edict effectively established religious toleration.” 

“This time”? Why did it work better this time? We are left to surmise that it was because of Constantine’s own conversion and strong leadership, although he died in 337, just 7 years later. Of course the Roman Empire fell in 476, so all of this “freedom” silliness died off with it, ushering in the Dark Ages and Vikings and Crusades and nearly endless war and plunder for over a thousand years.

A good video about Constantine I:

Reminder: It’s Good to be Alive

 

Jason Gray is here to remind us of this important fact.

Gratitude

We all need a reminder about that sometimes. 

So right here right now
While the Sun is shining down
I wanna live
Like there’s no tomorrow
Love
Like I’m on borrowed time
It’s good to be alive

We are always living and loving on borrowed time, we just don’t realize it.

170 Years Ago This Week: Uncle Tom’s Cabin is Published, Fueling the Abolitionist Movement

 

And becomes the best-selling book of the 19th century in the U.S. (besides the Bible).

You can read the summary of the plot here — but far more interesting historically is the impact it had.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote it in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which threw gas on the fire, exacerbating a long-running sore point between free and slave states — how much are people in free states obligated to help return escaped slaves to their owners? How legally liable can they be? It quickly turns into a thorny question with conflicts between states, and between federal and state law.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin resonated with the public because it told a dramatic story about contemporary moral struggles with a noble Christian slave protagonist, and in telling that story made a convincing case that slavery was fundamentally incompatible with Christianity.

The book is best understood not as an isolated incident but as part of the abolitionist movement started in the 1700s in both the Colonies and Britain and was fueled by two major forces, the Enlightenment and Christianity — and it directly opposed the very big business that the slave trade had become since the 1500s. 

The slave trade was very big business not just for the British but for the Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Spaniards in the West Indies, South America, and United States. It was global, and a key piece of colonial power.

The entire economies in many of these places depended on slavery and the slave trade — this was well before the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century that would transform every modern economy in the world. This means that in addition to moral questions around slavery and the slave trade there were very powerful economic interests with little incentive to do away with it. 

The British were the leading edge of the abolitionist movement and the first to abolish the slave trade (1807) and then the practice itself (1833). Prominent figures were James Oglethorpe, William Wilberforce, and several other Brits.

Oglethorpe was a British soldier and MP who founded the colony of Georgia in 1732 (as a place to send “the unemployed and the unemployable”) and outlawed slavery there for a time from 1735 to 1750.

Wilberforce was a British MP who, after becoming an Evangelical Christian in 1785 and the main abolitionist in Parliament, was a prime driver behind the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and then the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 in Parliament. 

But there’s so much more and I encourage clicking one or more of the links below.

Somehow the British, at one time the largest slaveholders in the world, get little recognition for their role in abolishing slavery throughout their lands. They also avoided fighting a Civil War over it, probably because it was more of a Colonialism issue than an internal regional conflict.

More on the U.S. role in the abolitionist movement soon. 

Recommended listening: Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast in general and his most recent episode on the Atlantic slave trade, it’s fascinating and insightful, as always. I learned a lot and I’m only halfway through (it’s nearly 6 hours in length, so you have to break it into consumable chunks).

Recommended video for context:

Links:

• https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/uncle-toms-cabin-is-published
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Oglethorpe
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833

 

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

This last week has been very trying for us, with health challenges for our family and adapting to new realities and finding the strength to do that.

So it seems like an especially good time to highlight this great Alan Jackson album “Precious Memories” which is filled with gospel hymns he grew up singing with his family in church.

Here’s just one example, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”

Awesome story behind the making of this album — he wanted to thank his mother for her guidance in his faith, and recorded this entire album without her knowledge and gave her the CD for Christmas. 

If you like this one, you’ll like the rest too.